Electric cars are currently powered by heavy battery packs with limited storage capacity. Nickel metal hydride and lithium ion batteries are used in most electric vehicles, but could be replaced by new types of power sources. New technology will make electric cars more desirable. A nanoscale material developed in Britain could yield wafer-thin cellphones and light-weight, long-range electric cars powered by the roof, boot and doors. For now, the new technology, a patented mix of carbon fibre and polymer resin that can charge and release electricity just like a regular battery, is being tested in the laboratory. But if scaled-up, it could offer several advantages over existing energy sources for hybrid and electric cars, according to the team of scientists at Imperial College London who developed it. Lithium-ion batteries used in the current generation of plug-in vehicles are heavy, adding to energy consumption, and also depend on dwindling supplies of the steadily rising in cost- metal lithium. The new material has the limitation of being expensive to make, but being entirely synthetic, it’s production will not be limited by availability of natural resources. The carbon-polymer composite does not depend on chemistry, leading to a longer life and quicker charge as well, whereas conventional batteries need chemical reactions to generate juice, a process which causes them to degrade over time and gradually lose the capacity to hold a charge. Since the material is composed of elements measured in billionths of a metre, the mechanical properties of the fibers are not compromised. Vehicles with bodies from the new material would likewise shed weight because it is four time lighter than steel, while remaining as strong and stiff. Carbon fibre is a much more expensive than steel, but mass production could bring down costs dramatically. A California based battery maker called Z Power has developed and patented a new cell design using nano particles and a special separator membrane to dramatically extend the life of silver zinc or silver oxide batteries to the point they claim they are viable for use in laptops, mobile devices and even cars. Z Power’s silver-zinc battery offers 40% more run time than lithium ion, a flatter power delivery curve and, with the new technology, long life, without the lithium ion batteries drawbacks of potential flammability. The battery packs 40% more power and removes the risk of fire for electric cars. Greater power density allows smaller batteries or longer life between charges but clearly the cost of silver could be a major hurdle against take up over the cheaper lithium-ion battery. The company is proposing a closed loop recycling program for batteries used in laptops or even cars, whereby the consumer would exchange a battery when re-charge levels drop below a certain point it would recycle the silver content - dramatically reducing the life cycle cost of the battery as a component of the overall product cost. Researchers at Stanford have developed a method of impregnating paper with electrolyte, then layering the surface of the paper with carbon nanotubes. Scientists have converted sheets of plain paper into efficient electrical storage devices using ink loaded with carbon nanotubes. To devise the novel paper batteries, materials scientist Yi Cui of Stanford University and his colleagues coated plain copy paper with black ink made with single-walled carbon nanotubes, which are electrically conductive pipes only billionths of a meter wide. Positive and negative electrodes - cathodes and anodes - were then applied as slurries dried on the nanotube-impregnated paper. (The cathodes were made from lithium manganese oxide nanorods, and the anodes made either from nanopowders of lithium titanium oxide or nanowires with cores of carbon covered with shells of silicon). The batteries were then dipped in an electrolyte of lithium hexafluorophosphate solution to connect the electrodes and sealed in a pouch. The carbon nanotubes bonded very strongly to the paper, obviating the need for adhesives that decrease performance and significantly increase production costs. In this setup, the nanotubes collected current from each electrode. Based on their experiments, the researchers say that incorporating carbon nanotube paper into conventional rechargeable batteries could reduce their weight by up to 20%. This reduction could help make electric and hybrid vehicles more feasible and could lead to longer-lasting mobile phones, laptops and other portable electronics. The end result is a lithium ion battery that is cost effective and lightweight. This nano battery material can be formed into any shape that is needed and stacked like a ream of paper to increase the output of the battery. When this technology is fully developed for use in electric vehicles, it could allow electric cars to be priced competitively with gasoline-powered cars.